It's
no secret that I like Grado headphones. My fandom started in the early 1990s
when I purchased Grado's lowest priced model at a local dealer, the SR-60 for
$69. I was very, very impressed. This model is still in production as the more
refined SR-60e. Believe it or not, these "budget" headphones currently sell for
$79, and by using an internet inflation calculator -- in 1992 dollars the SR-60e
would have sold for around $45. I know, those on-line inflation calculators don't
account for many things, but really, even at $79 in 2017 dollars this headphone
is a steal. I don't know how Grado Labs does it, but I've met many owners of
these headphones and every single one of them is happy with theirs. What is also
surprising is that when listening the to their top-of-the-line headphones, I can
hear a family resemblance to every other Grado model I've ever heard. That's a
good thing, because the sonic characteristics of the Grado line lean very
strongly towards the excellent.

In the October 2012 issue of Enjoy the Music.com's
Review Magazine I wrote a review
of Grado's then top-of-the-line PS-1000
headphones, which was basically a love letter to Grado, as I had only praise
for this headphone, sonic and otherwise. After this review these $1695 cans
became my reference for dynamic headphones. Not long after that, Grado upgraded
this model to the PS-1000e, without changing
its price. I couldn't imagine how Grado could make improvements to
the older model, yet Grado surprised me and indeed made some minor improvements
to their excellent sounding flagship model. And so, the newer PS-1000e became my
reference for dynamic headphones. Grado surprised me again
by recently introducing their even newer
flagship model, and the subject of this review, the PS-2000e.

And I again find myself wondering how improvements can be made
to their flagship model. But indeed, they did. The PS-2000e is built with a
hand-carved maple inner chamber surrounded by a "smoked chrome" finish. Grado
says that by surrounding the maple with metal, it eliminates "ringing" and other
anomalies that can distort the sound that comes through to one's ears. They also
redesigned the driver of the headphone, lowering the amount of coloration that
could distort the music. The redesigned diaphragm geometry of the PS-2000e is
said to be more accurate.

Grado also developed a new front cap and grille to lessen
diffraction of the musical signal. The PS-2000e has a wider leather head-strap
with more padding than the PS-1000e, which I thought was very comfortable to
begin with. These improvements that I'm writing about come from Grado's website,
which is designed very well, I must admit. But the most important thing to me
about these ‘phones, and in any audio component, is its sonic performance. I
wouldn't care if Grado made the headphone out of spare computer printer parts
held it all together with duct tape. If the result was that it sounded good and
had a decent warranty, I'd be OK with that.

RegularlyI listen to headphones regularly, at home and on the go. For
listening on the go, for quite a while I used the
Questyle QP1r portable music player, which was reviewed by Steven Rochlin back in
September of 2015. I've recently acquired a FiiO X5 Third Gen music
player, and both players are high enough quality that I can forgo using any
headphone amplifier between the device and my headphones. When listening to
these portable players, my headphones can vary from inexpensive
inner-ear-monitor (IEM), to some more expensive open-back headphones. Open-back
headphones that I have for this task are the Grado SR-80e and SR-325e.

I find that the noisy environment of the streets or the train
don't warrant using super-pricey headphones. Others may disagree, and so one day
I might be convinced to change my mind, but it is only at home where I perform
my serious headphone listening, and where I bring out the best headphones I
have. I believe listening to a great headphone at home through a decent
headphone amplifier is something every audiophile should experience. Yes, it is
very different than listening to a system with speakers, but it can be just as
rewarding. Currently, my headphone amplifier of choice is the Pass
Laboratories HPA-1, which I first gushed over in the October 2016 issue of Enjoy
The Music. I also have on hand an Oppo HA-1 headphone amp, which I
became aware of during my review of OPPO's
PM-1 headphones, which I still use regularly. The PM-1 headphone amp has a
built-in DAC, but the Pass Labs model is strictly a headphone amp, with very few
extra features, but its sound quality is the best I have in my home.

When listening at home I use a stretch of Cardas cable that
runs between the Pass Lab's headphone amp's input and an output on my main
system. I like to connect the cable as close to the source as possible, so when
listening to vinyl I connect the Cardas cable directly to an output of my Pass
Labs XP-15 phono preamp. When listening to digital I like the interconnect to be
attached to an output of the DAC I'm using, which is currently a model made by
Auralic, either the VEGA or their newer VEGA G2.

TimeNow is as good time to discuss the pricing of headphones.
During the past decade audiophiles have seen technical advancements in the areas
of personal listening devices, and this includes headphones of all types,
headphone amplifiers, and all the accessories that come with them. But along
with these advances have come a rise in price. Yes, one can get much more for
much less money than ever before, but it seems as if one can also spend more on
a headphone than ever before. Yes, there has always been a higher-end in
headphone design, but that was mostly limited to the Stax brand of electrostatic
headphones and their dedicated amplifiers. But nowadays high-priced models seem
to be coming out of the woodwork, to coin a phrase. And of course, there are
some audiophiles, more than I would have thought, complaining about these higher
prices. The Grado PS-2000e cost $2695.

This is relatively expensive for a headphone, but not that
expensive for a high-end component. When one considers the price for a decent
pair of high-end speakers, or just about any high-end component, yes, there are
less expensive components, but there are many that cost more, and the price of
these headphones seem to be in-line with the pricing of many other high-end
components. Headphones are a very important piece of the audio chain, where one
hears the result of why we've assembled our audiophile systems in the first
place, the systems that are designed to provide us with the highest fidelity
that is technically possible given the flexibility of our budgets. To skimp on
headphones makes no sense. One should aspire to the best headphones one can
afford.

AmazingThe PS-2000e is an amazing headphone. The easiest way of
describing its sound is to state that it is very similar to its younger sibling,
the PS-1000e, but adds a touch more refinement, has a little more extension into
the frequency extremes, and has a bit more of a see-through quality, that is, a
sound that enables the source to disappear and simply let the music flow into
one's ears and into one's senses. Yes, it is a cliché to say that the PS-2000e
made each album I listened to sound as if I've never heard it before, but again,
this is very similar trait possessed by the PS-1000e.

When I played a complex recording, such as some of the mid-60s
Bluenote LPs that are in my collection, the sound was extremely detailed, but at
the same time, extremely musical. Again, this is the same thing I said about the
PS-1000 and PS-1000e, and like those headphones, the music sounds so good that
when performing serious listening sessions, I'd often become distracted by the
music that was playing and forget to take listening notes. Through all of this,
it was the music that made itself known, not the sonic prowess of the
headphone. This made it easy to hear the intensions of the musicians, producers,
and engineers that made the recording.

Once again, I've been on a John Coltrane kick, listening to
all eras during his reign as one of the best saxophone players in the world.
Some of my favorite Coltrane, and said by many to be his best albums, were
recorded on Atlantic Records from 1959 to about 1961, where he had permission
from the record company to do pretty much whatever he wanted as a band leader,
and in doing so released some of his most famous works. One of the first albums
he recorded on Atlantic was his groundbreaking Giant
Steps, released in 1959. On this recording is a small combo, with
John Coltrane on tenor sax, Tommy Flanagan on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and
Art Taylor on drums. Pianist Wynton Kelly and drummer Jimmy Cobb sub on one
track. It might be assumed before listening to it that this four-man band would
be a simple recording, with all the musicians playing their instruments in the
same room, with no overdubs, and the musician's instruments only divided by
small baffles to prevent bleeding into each other's microphones. It doesn't sound
simple when listening to this album through a high-end system, that's for sure.

Within my collection I have both the mono and stereo versions
of Giant Steps on LP, and both
mono and stereo versions on high-resolution digital downloaded from HDTracks.
This album isn't what I'd call a stereotypical audiophile recording, however, it
is one that I've played so often I feel as if I could transcribe the score for
each instrument! The sound through the PS-2000e is far from "simple", because
these headphones can not only separate each instrument, but also place it in
distinct area of the soundfield -- better than I've ever heard before. The "distinct
area in the soundfield" is what is most amazing because this is true even when
playing the mono recording. In fact, I prefer the mono version over the stereo
version, and on it there is still something one could call a soundstage akin to
the one that we hear through our system's speakers, allowing each instrument or
group of instruments, as in the case of the drums, to not only occupy its own
area in space, but to allow the air around each instrument to be heard, and the
air in Atlantic's West 57th Street studio in New York to become
audible.

When playing this album, of course one of the most outstanding
characteristics is Coltrane's playing, especially his choice of notes during his
extraordinary solos. Many of his contemporaries seemed to have an assemblage of
licks stored in their head for their solos, and call them up as needed.
Coltrane, on the other hand, performed his solos as a stream of consciousness
that is being revealed as he proceeded, with no two "licks" being the same
unless that is what was needed at the time, as he explored the breadth of the
tune, experimenting, but at the same time having an intelligent approach to
these dense patterns. His harmonic ideas during these solos were sometimes
relative to the melody of the head of the tune, sometimes in relation to the
chords of the tune in a modal style, often diminished or other scales that come
into his mind, and some of them remain a mystery, but they all seem as if they
are decided upon at lightning speed.

While this is all going on my attention will often wander in a
meditative fashion, like it often does when at a performance, such as when my
attention would turn to the sound of his horn, perhaps noting its reediness, and
then turn to the other members of his band's instruments such as Art Taylors
drums, where I might focus on the realistic sounding hit and release of his
often-hit tom skins, the sizzle of his cymbals, the lifelike sounding crack of
his snare, and then my attention might be attracted to the sound of the reverb
as it bled into the sound of the other instruments on the recording. The
PS-2000e was not only able to sonically sort all of this out, but most
importantly, reproduce every instrument with an extremely lifelike sound,
transporting my mind's ear back in time to the recording session, making it easy
to be able to imagine the session taking place.

As expected, more aggressive fare than the Coltrane sounded
great through the PS-2000e. I'm a unique music lover in that I still listen to
the music that I enjoyed when I was younger, I've just piled new genres and new
artists on top of what was already in my collection. So, when spinning the
relatively new reissue of Steppenwolf's first, self-titled LP from 1968 on
200-gram vinyl, mastered by Kevin Gray and pressed in 2013 at Quality Records
owned by Acoustic Sounds, it not only was a great test for the Grado headphones,
but I was able to enjoy the ever increasingly great sound this album has
attained over the years. Actually, this album always sounded very good, even
back when I had to endure the noisy vinyl of the late 1960s/early 1970s ABC
Records pressings -- yet perhaps it was just the music on the record that
overshadowed its sound quality.

Regardless, this album was recorded at American Recorders
outside of Los Angeles, which has a history of making some very decent sounding
products. Some might suspect that the Steppenwolf hits "Born To Be Wild" and "The
Pusher" might be the only decent tracks on the album, but this is not so. It is
a great listen from start to finish, with not a bad track on the entire album.
The Grado PS-2000e let me revel in the sound of the band, including leader John
Kay's distorted Fender guitar and amplifier on most of the songs. But listening
to this album on headphones is a real treat, and listening to it on what I
consider one of the best headphones ever made was even a greater thrill. All the
instruments, the drums, the piano, distorted Hammond B3, the guitars, and
especially the vocals were all separated into different parts of a relatively
crowded soundstage, made to sound even more crowded because the dynamics on the
majority of the tracks range at most from loud to louder. And that's certainly
cool with me. This listening experience was not as if I was eavesdropping in on
the session, as on the Coltrane, because when listening at a healthy volume
through the PS-2000e the Steppenwolf was more of an immersive experience.

The reason given by some as why they don't like headphone
listening is that the sounds seem to emanate from "inside the head". Listening
to Steppenwolf's debut did not sound like this at all when played back through
the Grado PS-2000e when connected to the Pass Labs HP-1 headphone amplifier. The
collection of sounds that made up the band and the vocals were, as I mentioned,
separated in a large soundstage, or soundfield as I like to call this when
speaking of headphones. But these sounds didn't emanate "inside of my head", but
were part of a huge soundfield that surrounded my head like a 3D halo. This
relatively early stereo mix had some instruments panned hard left and hard
right, some of those sounded as if they were coming from across the room, some
much closer to me. The vocals that were centered in the mix sounded as if the
originated a few feet in front of my forehead, the reverb bleeding above, below,
and to the sides of the voice, as if it was casting a light- colored shadow. I
hope some listeners get to audition these headphones through a good source
connected to a decent headphone amp to experience a sound such as this, with
material as good as what is recorded on this LP. Even when I played the
remastered digital version of this album, it was quite an experience. 35 minutes
of hippy bliss.

BestThere is no question that the Grado PS-2000e is one of the
best headphones on the market. It sounds fantastic, and I found the new wider
leather head-strap to support these rather heavy ear-goggles in a very
comfortable manner. Its sound quality is practically faultless, and possesses a
certain aural magic that one finds only in an ultra-premium audiophile product.
One might notice that I spent as much time writing about the music I was playing
through these Grados as the sound of the headphones. This is because the
headphones have a sound that is at the service of the music, period. And so, the
PS-2000e is definitely worth its asking price.

The wrinkle here, though, is a common one -- the law of
diminishing returns. The Grado PS-2000e costs one thousand dollars more than the
model one step below it in their line, the PS-1000e. It certainly seems as if it
costs Grado quite a bit to manufacture these headphones, and to make the
improvements in the PS-2000e. But even if this new model does sound better, is
this extra cost worth it? I cannot answer that question, because this is a
question that the potential owner of the PS-2000e is going to have to ask for
him or herself. I certainly think the Grado PS-2000e is worth the price. If you
can afford it, go for it.